"A deeply meaningful collection that navigates important nuances of identity." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review   Bronze Medal for Anthologies from Independent Publisher Book Awards - Top Five 2021 Books on Race and Ethnicity by Diverse Voices Book Review - Silver Medal for Best Culturally Themed Academic Book from International Latino Book Awards - Da Vinci Eye Award for superior cover artwork from Eric Hoffer Book Awards Nepantla Familias brings together Mexican American narratives that explore and negotiate the many permutations of living in between different worlds--how the authors or their characters create, or fail to create, a cohesive identity amid the contradictions in their lives. Nepantla --or living in the in-between space of the borderland--is the focus of this anthology. The essays, poems, and short stories explore the in-between moments in Mexican American life--the family dynamics of living between traditional and contemporary worlds, between Spanish and English, between cultures with traditional and shifting identities. In times of change, family values are either adapted or discarded in the quest for self-discovery, part of the process of selecting and composing elements of a changing identity. Edited by award-winning writer and scholar Sergio Troncoso, this anthology includes works from familiar and acclaimed voices such as David Dorado Romo, Sandra Cisneros, Alex Espinoza, Reyna Grande, and Francisco Cantú, as well as from important new voices, such as Stephanie Li, David Dominguez, and ire'ne lara silva. These are writers who open and expose the in-between places: through or at borders; among the past, present, and future; from tradition to innovation; between languages; in gender; about the wounds of the past and the victories of the present; of life and death. Nepantla Familias shows the quintessential American experience that revives important foundational values through immigrants and the children of immigrants. Here readers will find a glimpse of contemporary Mexican American experience; here, also, readers will experience complexities of the geographic, linguistic, and cultural borders common to us all. "A deeply meaningful collection that navigates important nuances of identity." — Kirkus Reviews , starred review "In his introduction to the anthology, Sergio Troncoso says he believes the feeling of nepantla is a universal one. "Anyone who has left their home and tried to find a new one in a strange place—at times welcoming and at times hostile—they should find themselves in these pages . . . And anyone who has crossed any border to create who they are . . . and suffered the consequences for it—they will find their fellow travelers, their kindred spirits, in these pages." I think he is absolutely correct. Monoculture is a myth, and one of many fictions I hope to see dismantled in my lifetime. And I believe embracing nepantla, the in-between, as well as the people who exist in in-between worlds, who will live and die in that liminal space, is the key toward healing lifetimes of division." —Elizabeth Gonzalez James in Ploughshares Blog "Currently reading Nepantla Familias: a phenomenal anthology of Mexican American literature on families in between worlds by @SergioTroncoso. Super recommended!!" —Pati Jinich of Pati's Mexican Table on Twitter "Surviving in two worlds is difficult. That experience was brilliantly captured in a new book titled Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American families in between Worlds . Edited by Sergio Troncoso and enriched with contributions from 26 Mexican American authors who have lived the nepantla experience, this book is both a sociological study and an ethnographic model of lives for Mexican Americans in the United States. It is particularly poignant for those who live in borderlands, like we do in Texas, with Mexico on the south of the Rio Grande and the U.S. and Texas to the north." — Corpus Christi Caller-Times "Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in Between Worlds edited by Sergio Troncoso is a beautiful collection of essays, poems, and short stories that explores lives of Mexican Americans grappling with ever-shifting identities, cultures, and languages." —Vesna Jaksic Lowe in Immigrant Strong "With almost 250 pages of joy—that's what readers take awayin the end—readers of Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds are certain to find themselves mirrored, cautioned, advised, thrilled, disappointed, deeply moved many times over." —Michael Sedano in La Bloga "Such a window, such an ax, into the hard, human struggles of writers, sisters and brothers here — resolving, harmonizing and perhaps, simply just telling their Nepantlas. These lives in-between bridges of culture, of gender, of memory and presence, invisibility and courage, of raped bodies on the precipice of healing and wholeness, of speaking versus silence